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PROFILE

Volume 4 Number 9

'Just Do It'

01 October 1991

David Allbrook's watchword has led him into famine relief, the hospice movement, the presidency of Amnesty International in Australia and pioneering medical training in East Africa. John Bond meets an academic who believes in action.

How the hell do you sell death?' demanded the chairman of the TV station. A telethon in aid of a hospice for the terminally ill seemed a sure way to make his viewers switch channels. But David Allbrook, Director of the advanced cancer department at Mater Hospital in Newcastle, Australia, won the day and the event raised A$2.4 million.

That's the kind of situation Allbrook delights in. He sees opportunities where others see problems; a trait which has spiced his career as a doctor and medical professor.

In 1974, for instance, news of famine in Ethiopia broke across the world's TV screens. That night Allbrook woke with a question ringing in his head: `What are you going to do about it?' Early next day he was on the phone to the relevant government office. `We're sending a plane-load of high-protein biscuits,' he was told. `Do you want to go with it?' Taken aback but undaunted, Allbrook said, `Yes'. Within days he was in Ethiopia, making a survey. As a result, Australia helped to set up a community medical scheme in Tigre, the worst famine area.

In the same spirit, he joined Amnesty International after hearing a talk on prisoners of conscience. For three years he was its Australian President.

Allbrook's approach to life stems from his faith. `As a shy English teenager,' he says, `I met people from the Oxford Group (later MRA). I was captivated by their zest for life. They were of all ages and backgrounds. They believed that God could give people creative ideas which could transform society.'

They suggested he try listening for God's direction. `As I sat in quiet, often I would only get a sense of inner peace. Gradually thoughts came, which I wrote down. Sometimes through turmoil, a slowly emerging sense of the way to go would emerge. "Just do it" became a watchword.'

He studied medicine at University College, London (UCL), and was Secretary of London University's Christian Union. There he met Mary, a ward sister training for medical missionary work. That was his aim too - at least by the time they walked cheerfully down the aisle together in 1949. So they were shattered when an earlier bout of tuberculosis flared up and he was rejected for service in the tropics.

Allbrook took on research into muscle diseases at UCL. Commuting to London, he often sat opposite a man who, in true British fashion, cautiously introduced himself after a month or two. He turned out to be a doctor looking for staff to teach at Uganda's new Makerere College Medical School. Soon the Allbrooks were on their way to Africa.

Perhaps it was this experience which taught them to look on setbacks as opportunities for God to show something better. If so, the lesson wasn't over. The medical school was destroyed by an explosion even before they arrived. Little was left except the school's large collection of bones in the basement.

`Bones bored me,' says Allbrook with a grin. But he soon became fascinated with all they told him about human evolution. In neighbouring Kenya, Louis Leakey was making discoveries on human origins. Soon expeditions led by Allbrook discovered Dryopithecus, a 20-million-year-old ancestor of modern apes.

Such finds led him into studying the biology of humans through the ages. The process of evolution, he began to see, was brought about not just by biological forces, but also by people's choices. If so, human biology needed to include the study of why people choose as they do.

At Makerere he threw himself into the work of creating a medical training relevant to the needs of Africa. `He made a tremendous impression with his dedication and dynamic energy,' says a Ugandan colleague, Professor John Kibukamusoke. Enrolment grew to 110, Allbrook became Dean and helped establish national medical schools in Kenya and Tanzania.

Then in 1965 he was stricken by severe hepatitis, followed by an equally severe depression. By this time African doctors were running many of Makerere's departments. The Allbrooks' four children - three of them born in Uganda - were approaching high-school age. So they decided the time had come to leave.

Allbrook was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the University of Western Australia. There he developed his holistic approach to medical training. `He would lecture on topics which were treated with scepticism, such as the link between faith and consciousness,' remembers a colleague, Professor Peter Newman, now one of Australia's prominent city-planners. Western medicine has under-rated moral and spiritual factors, Allbrook believes, and this needs correcting.

So when abortion laws were under review, Allbrook opened the university's main lecture hall to the public, and spoke on the danger of wholesale liberalization. When Monash University in Melbourne - a pioneer in human embryo experiments - was establishing its bio-ethics centre, he went there to debate euthanasia with two well-known reforming judges. He spent a year at Cambridge University in England, where he lectured on medical ethics.

Ethics has never been a theoretical matter for him. In Uganda he adopted a policy of `no cover-ups and, immediately anything went wrong, apology and restitution'. In Western Australia at one time, he realized that he was part of a destructive rivalry between department heads. He went to a fellow professor and apologized. `We are all guilty,' was the response. Relations improved noticeably.

`We have learnt that life is not a matter of avoiding difficulties,' says Mary Allbrook, `but of working through them when you run into them.' She has chosen to be a home-maker for their children and the many others who have thronged every home they have lived in. When the children moved into their own careers, Allbrook accepted an invitation to be acting Master of Kingswood College at the university and Mary became Dean of Women.

Allbrook's research into muscle regeneration has recently led to a new treatment for children with muscular dystrophy. And just before he retired in 1987 he realized a long-held vision - the opening of a human biology centre with a broad view of human life. It has been named the David Allbrook Centre and, says Peter Newman, `it carries his stamp'. Newman has just lectured there on creating city environments that encourage a spirit of community to flourish. From Australia, the Allbrooks had watched Uganda descend into a bloody chaos under Amin and Obote. At the first chance Allbrook was back on a visit, laughing and weeping with his former students, moved by the heroism of those who had kept medical services running, and helping to re-establish the services which had collapsed. On their retirement they hoped to return to East Africa long-term; but Mary learned she had a disease which needed continuous medical attention.

Though disappointed, they characteristically seized a new opportunity. Some years earlier Allbrook had met Cicely Saunders, pioneer of the hospice movement, and had helped to introduce her ideas to Australia. Now he took the job of Director of Palliative Care at Mater Hospital in Newcastle.

Caring for people with advanced cancer, he says, is an inspiration. `I remember John who, with weeks to live, started drawing pictures of his children; and Tom, in his last fortnight, surrounded with family and friends, a magic time of joy and sorrow. Such people show the potential for a new beginning, even in the most desperate situation.' They deserve the best care that society can give, Allbrook believes - hence the telethon for the hospice. Allbrook and his colleagues were amazed by the response from Newcastle citizens. Two years later, the hospice is nearly built.

The Allbrooks hadn't been long in Newcastle when an earthquake severely damaged the city. In the following months it became clear that conflict among the city's leaders was hampering reconstruction. In an attempt to give new perspective, the Allbrooks convened a weekend conference. Two hundred and fifty people took part: politicians, trade unionists, academics, city councillors gave practical experiences of healing division. At the end of one meeting the Lord Mayor shook hands with one of his fiercest opponents on the Council.

It was a huge venture, but many rallied to help. `He has that quality, rare among doctors, of wanting you to work with him, not for him,' says Allbrook's secretary at the hospital, Bev Jones. `He is demanding, but effervescent too.'

What spurs him on? `I listen as my patients tell of the destruction they wreak on themselves and their loved ones by their choices,' says Allbrook. `In my Amnesty work I have seen institutionalized cruelty, and have pitied alike the self-righteous torturers and their shattered victims. Societies can destroy themselves. History is full of such tragedies.

`In the 1990s we have the potential to destroy our habitat or develop a sane world order. It depends entirely on ordinary people who say, "This is my responsibility. I will do it, no matter what the cost." The pathway may turn rough, our feet may bleed and our backs break, but the satisfaction of knowing that we have responded to God's call is past expressing.'